Dear Terry,
again, I am more than pleased to accept the distinctions that you are making - they are very useful.
Equally, I'd like to retain the forbidden category of consciousness as an agent - it helps explain lots of ways of standing/relating to conscious events.
I am think here, in particular, of accounts that prophets and poets make of their experiences. When we characterize certain conscious experiences as coming from somewhere else, one of the places we can refer to is consciousness itself. That is, as the events occur in consciousness, so consciousness is not only the place of origin (where awareness took place - which is not a denial that there may have been pre-conscious events) but it (consciousness) is also, possibly the intermediary agent of the flow of events. Think of a shape being given to things by the container they are in - a thought in Keith's consciousness could be shaped by the history of Keith's consciousness such that an event is taken by Keith to be more valued or less valued based on the shape that his consciousness has taken through its history of events and actions on events. That is, as an expert thinker, I am open to turning on the lights and calling for a party when certain events happen.
We may well, in the case of experts, want to consider the possibility that shifting decision activities to the frontal lobes is an example of consciousness being shaped in ways that we should properly say that consciousness, in its actions, amounts an agent or a process thing (or fake thing- fakes are dynamic shapes that are things by virtue of their features at moments of action and/or time - think of a coil of rope of a hand).
As visions occur to the prophet, the prophet may, for practical reasons, call the origin of these events something like GOD. Hence Jeremiah, faced with outlandish ideas occuring in his consciousness, turns back to an imagined source and complains: God why have you given me these thoughts and worse, why do you want me to act on them?
If we allow that the GOD mentioned here is a particular shape of the prophet's consciousness that the prophet is treating as an agent then we can see how the psychic economy functions. It might sound mad to a non-prophet, but for the prophet/poet, this structure allows the prophet/poet to stay sane.
cheers
keith
>>> Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> 04/06/11 10:20 AM >>>
Dear Fil and Keith,
Keith wrote: <snip> we can define the originating of thinking as the moment
*consciousness* becomes aware of and accepts the event of a
thought.<endsnip>
[my emphasis - and I presume that Keith means 'conscious agent' -
consciousness doesn't have agency because it is an abstract concept not a
thing or being]
The problems for creating design theory (and its failure) come if we assume
this conscious agent ('consciousness' in Keith above) is the same as the 'I'
that each of us perceives.
Best wishes,
Terry
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